


An Old Song

by boxoftheskyking



Series: Everything Is a Fucking Crisis [1]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Age Difference, All the pilots are banging, Drinking, Multi, Music, Poe sings, what is this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-09
Updated: 2016-01-09
Packaged: 2018-05-12 18:21:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5675938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boxoftheskyking/pseuds/boxoftheskyking
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is folk music in space and all the pilots are probably banging. And Poe has a thing about his age.</p><p>“This song,” Jess murmurs very seriously, not looking away from Poe as he picks out something light and slow on the instrument, “is every pilot’s favorite song. It’s the best song every written.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Old Song

**Author's Note:**

> This is easily the most disjointed thing I’ve ever made, but I was thinking about, you know, those really drunk nights from my half-remembered youth that go from being super deep to super ridiculous in like three seconds.
> 
>  
> 
> Also Jess Pava has no tact but she’s still great.

Poe and Snap were gone a month longer than planned this time, narrowly avoiding capture on a sparsely populated planet hardly bigger than a moon. By the time they returned, Finn had all but worn a trench in the path between the barracks and the landing strip, pacing back and forth each day. His ribs feel like an empty cage, or, no— A cage with some tiny clawed animal inside, crawling around in his organs and scratching at his heart.

The General had reassured him seven times that return dates are always estimates for recon missions, and that Poe’s last transmission gave her no real reason to worry. Finn mostly believed her, but sometimes he’d arrived at the landing strip to find her already there, drinking hot caf and looking worriedly up at the sunrise.

There’s a beige tarp stuck up on the wall of the X-wing hangar with little cloth figures pinned to it. The mechanic who’d started the tradition isn’t alive anymore, but the base keeps it going. Every time a mission goes out, a little figure - just a shape with a head and some arms - is pinned up for each of the pilots gone. It’s tradition to knock the wall next to it as you round the corner out of the hangar. For luck, they say. Finn's been talking about religion with a few of the med staff when he drops by to visit, and he thinks that when he stood in front of the tarp, trailing his fingers over the little black figure with a red number one painstakingly embroidered on its chest, waiting, feeling hollow, and wishing, he might have been close.

Now, though, Poe and Snap are back, finished with two days of debrief and cleared by medical. Two more missions have been completed since they set out, so the pilots are taking the excuse and celebrating. One corner of the mess hall has been turned into a makeshift cantina, strange lights on strings draped around the table holding bottles of liquor, a droid playing some popular song sitting up on a bench in the corner.

Rey has been nursing the same bottle for about an hour, taking small, furtive sips and screwing up her face after every swallow. Poe keeps offering to get her something else but she just holds the bottle closer to her chest and squints at him defensively. Finn has had more than one bottle. Probably more than two? The liquor doesn’t seem too strong, but it’s bubbly, and that might be messing with him more than the alcohol.

Poe has had more than two. Definitely.

“Dameron!” Snap bellows from the corner. “Get your ass over here!”

“What?” Poe yells back, not moving.

Snap cuts the music and pulls out some odd looking contraptions from under the table. He holds up one - a box with strings and straps hanging down - and shakes it in Poe’s direction.

“Get over here!” he yells again.

Poe takes a long final drink and slams the empty bottle down on the table. “Yeah, all right,” he says, getting up.

“Where are you—?” Finn starts. He’s not entirely comfortable with the rest of the pilots yet, and Jessika Pava keeps calling him “Trooper.” He doesn’t know how to tell her not to without being rude.

“Oh, you’ll see," she says, smirking at him.

Poe settles himself on the table the droid had been occupying, strapping the odd contraption around his waist and pulling on of the parts down over his foot.

“Is that a takra?” Rey asks Jess.

“Never seen one before?”

Rey just looks at her. Jess looks between her and Finn for a moment.

“Yeah, all right. Yes, that’s a takra, and Dameron’s the best player we’ve got.”

“What’s a—?”

Finn’s question is answered as a warm, ringing sound fills the room. Poe plucks at a few strings and fiddles with knobs and straps, head cocked to one side to listen to the sound.

“Oh,” Finn says, mostly to himself. “Oh wow.”

“Not a lot of music in the First Order, huh?” Jess asks.

“Not for us.”

“Shame.”

A few other pilots and mechanic have taken up other instruments and arranged themselves around Poe.

Snap murmurs something to Poe, who barks out a laugh and passes it along to the other musicians. One of them, a pilot who looks like a woman with gills, calls out “Three four!” and they begin to play.

It’s . . . raucous. That’s the word Finn would use, but it’s good, and Poe’s fingers are flying over the strings making a warm, giggling kind of melody as the gill-woman shakes something in a steady rhythm. Snap is singing something, the words almost too fast for Finn to understand, but every few lines seem to end with “the girl from Dantooine.” Every so often, Poe sings a long for a few words before stumbling over them and laughing.

When the song ends, the whole room explodes into cheers and whoops. Finn bangs on the table like the rest of the pilots, mouth hanging open. Rey says something to him, but he doesn’t hear her. He’s too busy trying to calm the electricity in his gut. Music. Real people playing real music. He can touch it. He could just . . . reach out and _touch_ it.

He hopes Poe won’t unstrap the instrument. He doesn’t, he just adjusts a few knobs and punches Snap’s arm.

“Starting with that one? Really? Man, you know I haven’t played in weeks.”

Snaps waves him off, laughing. A man shouts out something in a language Finn doesn’t recognize and Snap points at him.

“Yes, yes, all right,” he shouts, nodding to the others.

This song isn’t quite as fast, but it’s just as loud, and Poe sings more this time. His voice is warm, a little rough on the edge of the words, and even though Finn can’t understand the words he understands the joy of it, the victorious crow at the end of each chorus.

“It’s about a battle?” he asks Jess, leaning across the table to be heard.

“Yeah. Endor. His mother was there, you know.”

Finn sits back, smiling. Poe’s eyes are closed and he’s . . . hollering. The music is loud and louder, and the other pilots are joining in, stomping feet and banging bottles on the tables.

When it ends, someone in the crowd yells “Long live the Resistance!” and the whole room shakes with the response.

The next song is a bit quieter, and the next, and conversation starts up again around the room. Finn and Rey can’t stop watching, though.

“Did you have this,” Finn asks her, “on Jakku? Anything like this?”

She shakes her head.

Someone drops another bottle down on the table in front of him. He hadn’t even noticed that his own was empty. He looks around to thank whoever it was and sees one of his friends from medical depositing bottles of liquor in front of everyone they pass. For some reason it makes him bust into a fit of giggles.

“Don’t forget water, Trooper,” Jess says, pushing a pitcher towards him. He waves her off, not even angry at the name. She says it in a nice way, like a nickname. Like she thinks it’s friendly. He waves at her again, trying to make the wave say "it's okay but really it's not but I'm fine," but she’s already turned away from him.

The song fades out - just instruments this time, no words, with Nien Nunb playing some kind of horn. Admiral Statura calls out “Moons of Phaaros!” and most of the crowd cheers. Poe waves a hand, shaking his head, and moves to unstrap the takra. There a huge groan and stomping of feet.

“No, no, don’t play it! I’ll cry!” shouts the green gilled woman as Poe looks around the room, indecisive.

“Play it.” A gravelly, commanding voice cuts through the crowd. “If you like.”

Poe snaps to attention, as well as one can while strapped into a takra.

“Yes, General.”

General Organa crossed the room towards him, and the pilots fall close to silent, not at attention but still aware. Finn and Rey trade a look - neither knew she had joined the party. The General bangs a huge bottle down on the table next to Poe.

“For your trouble,” she says, a glint in her eye.

Poe blushes. Jess whoops and the rest of the crowd joins in.

“What is this? ‘Moons of Phaaros’?” Rey leans over to ask Jess. “I don’t know if I’ve heard of it.”

“You have,” Jess says. “Some places it’s called ‘The Commander,’ or—eh, I can’t remember the others. You’ll know it. He won’t—” she gestures to Finn. “But you will. Even on Jakku. It’s an old one.”

The rest of the musicians have sat back down, and it’s just Poe, alone. A hush falls over the crowd as Poe cracks open the bottle and takes a long swig before messing with the knobs and straps for a moment. Then, he takes a slow inhale and starts to play.

“This song,” Jess murmurs very seriously, not looking away from Poe as he picks out something light and slow on the instrument, “is every pilot’s favorite song. It’s the best song every written.”

Rey cocks her head to the side. “It sounds familiar. I think Chewie has a recording on the Falcon.”

“Of course he does. It’s the _best song ever written_. And nobody sings it like Dameron.”

Finn opens his mouth to ask a question, but he’s cut off by Poe’s voice.

“It was moonrise over Phaaros when the second engine failed.  
The fight was nearly over and the heroes had prevailed  
But that one lone ship was falling, soon the pilot would be dead  
The Commander faced his destiny and this is what he said . . .”

It’s a simple melody, repetitive and easy to pick up, and when Finn manages to tear his eyes away from Poe, he notices other people mouthing the words along with his singing. Jess has her eyes closed and her drink cradled in both hands. Finn loses some of the words as he focuses in on Poe’s hands. It’s like marching in formation - no. No, it’s like dancing, complicated weaving patterns in and around each other, pulling out sounds that fill the room like smoke. Finn feels lightheaded from it.

And his voice. It’s definitely his voice. Finn hasn’t thought much about singing, as a rule. Nines would sometimes hum under his breath when they were on latrine duty. Said it took his mind off the smell. “Constant exhale, FN-2187. That’s the trick.”

Poe sings like he talks; confident and sure, but dusty and smeared with something. It’s hard to describe. The words themselves are simple and sad, a pilot remembering the boy he’d left back home in the moments before he crashes. There’s a line that repeats, a chorus, that stops Finn’s heart.

“And if I could I would come home to you.  
And if you dream, when you dream, I’ll be home with you.”

The second “I” has an odd shape to it, high and falling lightly like tripping on stairs. But sweeter. Maybe like rain. Finn hasn’t seen much rain.

Poe sings. “I wish that I had known you when I still was young and wild  
It feels like I’ve been broken down since you were just a child  
If I could walk away from this, I’d follow where you lead  
Though the seven moons are rising, you’re the only light I need.”

Finn hears a loud sniff and looks over to Rey, who’s staring at Poe with that odd expression that Finn privately calls her Force-Face, like she can see through him, or inside him, or something. He hears the sniff again, and it’s definitely Jess, murmuring the words with tears on her cheeks

Finn takes a long drink and closes his eyes. He can see it, the cockpit of the X-wing - although if it’s an old song it’s probably not about an X-wing. But that’s what Finn imagines. The smell of burning, twisted metal, the wind howling through the damaged engines as the ground hurtles closer. Sense memory from the TIE fighter crash on Jakku. The pilot, serene and peaceful, eyes closed, whispering to the love he’ll never see again. Imagining his bright face and smile and laughing eyes—

Poe’s voice fades out, and it’s just the warm flow of the music. Finn feels something drip on his folded arms as he opens his eyes, and when he reaches up he feels tears running down to his chin. Poe’s eyes are closed, and he sings, “If I could, I would—” And his voice cracks and stops and he smiles a little down at the ground, like he’s embarrassed. Jess takes a long, shaky breath and wipes her eyes. The music slows and slows, until one lingering, wavering note remains.

Poe looks down at the ground and reaches behind him to unstrap the takra. Someone starts to stomp on the ground, and others join in, stomping, slamming fists on the tables. Finn looks around to the pilots, most wiping tears away or leaning closer to one another. Poe waves a hand, almost bashful, and leaves the room.

Finn doesn’t know how to feel as conversation starts up again. Rey’s eyes are a little red, but she’s chatting to the pilot on her other side like she can’t still feel the vibration of the music in her bones. Jess catches his eye and says, “Good, right?” and grins at him and he can’t do a thing but nod and clench his jaw and figure out how to get out of the room.

He stumbles into the refresher, scrubbing at his eyes and trying to figure out what to do with his pulse. He doesn’t notice Poe for a moment, and when he sees him he nearly jumps out of his skin, but Poe’s got his head down, resting on his forearms, bent over the sink, and he doesn’t look up. Finn casts an eye to the mirror to make sure his face is mostly clear before coughing self-consciously.

“Fuck!” Poe startles and bangs his elbow into the sink.

“Sorry! Sorry. I didn’t know— Sorry.”

Poe waves a hand to him, laughing a bit. It sounds forced.

“Are you—?” Finn starts, but changes direction. “I didn’t know you could sing.”

“Anyone can sing.”

“I can’t.”

“Sure you can.” Poe grins at him and it’s not quite in his eyes. “You just gotta try.”

“That song . . .” He tries to think of something to say, but it’s making his throat close up again and making his hands shake. He clenches them at his sides.

“It’s an old song.” Poe isn’t looking at him. “An old song for an ol— Well. That’s the Yavin version. There’s others. Same basic . . . you know.”

“The pilot. The crash.”

“Yeah. The boy.”

Finn nods. Poe still isn’t looking at him, chewing on his bottom lip and fiddling with his sleeve. Finn lets his fists relax. What a pair they make.

“Is he much younger? The boy I mean.”

Poe blinks at him. “I— It doesn’t say. I mean, it depends on the version, I guess. I think in the Hosnian version he’s the pilot’s son, but that’s not the one I know. My mother used to sing it to my dad, so. It’s that kind of— At least, to me. I think he just feels old. The pilot. Old and broken down, and— I mean when you love someone, they never really get old, I don’t think. Not in the ways that matter.” He huffs a laugh at himself and wipes his nose. “What do I know?”

“Is it always like this?” Finn asks, and his voice goes unsteady again. “Music?”

“Like what?”

Finn holds his hand out as though the right word was about to fall out of the air into his palm. He squeezes his eyes shut and realizes he’s started crying again, just a bit, and that probably answers the question well enough.

“Finn—” Poe starts, and steps forward as though he’s about to take the outstretched hand, and that would be too much, too much tonight, right now. Finn curls his fingers into a fist and presses it to the pit in his belly, right below his ribs where it aches.

“How do you _stand_ it?” He whispers. There’s something building in his head, and it’s louder than the song but just as resonant, just as unavoidable.

“It’s not all like that.” Poe says, unsure.

“Feeling. _Feeling_. It’s not just on the day I escape, or when Rey is captured, or when you’re alive or when I learn to walk or when you come back. It’s every day. Every single day. I can’t— I don’t know how to—”

“Finn—”

“Is it worth it?”

Poe does reach out to him now, holding his arms gently, easy to step away from.

“Yes,” he says, dead serious. “Finn. _Yes_.”

Finn swallows and nods and rubs his knuckles. Poe doesn’t let him go, and his breath smells like nectar, and Finn knows it’s whatever the General gave him to drink but for a moment he thinks it’s just Poe.

Poe cocks his head to the side and smiles a little.

“There,” he says, and Finn doesn’t understand it. “Listen.”

There’s a muffled thumping coming from down the hall, back in the mess, and Finn can pick out singing.

“It’s not all sad, the music.”

Finn tries to listen, but he doesn’t think it’s in Basic so he can’t pick out any words.

“Come on,” Poe says, tugging on his sleeve. “I’ll show you.”

“I don’t think I speak this,” Finn says as he follows Poe out of the refresher and into the hall, scrubbing his face clear with the sleeve of his jacket. The music is louder now, percussion and that same odd horn and singing that’s bound to be deafening by the time they reach it.

“You’ll catch on,” Poe laughs. “There’s like six words in the whole song.”

When Finn is about to go through the door, Poe touches his arm to stop him, just lightly.

“Hey,” he says, then bites his lip like he’s not sure what else to say.

“Yeah? Poe?”

“I’m always gonna come back. You know.”

“I—”

“I’m always going to come back to y— Where you are. Promise.” His cheeks are red and he’s looking at Finn’s shoulder instead of his face.

“You can’t promise that,” Finn says.

Poe grins at that, letting him go. “I can so. Best pilot in the Resistance.” He shoulders open the door and Finn loses him to a roar of sound.

Two glasses of something later, Finn is getting a hang of this song. It helps to have Poe’s arm around his shoulder and his voice in his ear. There really are only like six words.

Rey isn’t jumping around with the rest of them. She’s pulled her knees up to her chest on the bench, and she’s resting her chin on them, grinning up at the crowd. Her cheeks and the tips of her ears are pink, and she’s so far from the dusty, half-starved scavenger she was. She looks like she grew on a tree somewhere. She looks ripe.

Finn might be drunk. He’s definitely drunk.

Jess is on one side of him suddenly, and she’s pulled him away from Poe and into a spin that spins the whole room. He’s singing and laughing and tripping over himself to keep up with her. The song ends with a whoop and a burst of laughter that dissolves into chatter.

“Whoo!” Jess cries out, holding up Finns arm like a champion. “Trooper’s got moves! How’d the First Order ever keep you down, huh?”

“Electroshock four times a week and a lot of medication!” Finn shouts back cheerfully. “Like, a _lot_!”

Jess lets his arm fall and stares at him for a long, silent moment, mouth open. Finn looks down at his feet and bites his tongue to punish it.

He’s about to apologize when Poe comes up behind him and slings an arm over his shoulder.

“Water,” Poe says. “You need some water now unless you want a headache tomorrow.”

The crowd disperses and they make their way over to their original table, Poe’s arm steady around Finn’s shoulders. Someone picks up the takra and starts plucking idly at it; in Finn’s drunken opinion it’s a completely different instrument out of Poe’s hands. The man himself drops back onto the bench across from Rey, pulling Finn down next to him.

A tall pilot Finn’s never met comes over and says something in Poe’s ear, something Finn can’t catch.

“Not tonight, pal,” Poe says reaching up and squeezing his arm.

“You sure?” the pilot says, spreading his arms and grinning. “Plenty to go around.”

“Oh, I know.”

The man laughs at him and winks before turning to make his way through the thinning crowd.

“What was that?” Finn asks.

Poe turns red and tips his bottle back. It’s been empty for a while, but he slurps at it anyway.

“Nothing,” he mutters.

Jess flops down on the bench on Poe’s other side.

“Dameron. You taking me home tonight?”

Poe ignores her and reaches down the table for a jug of water. He can’t quite reach, and he’s about to get up when the jug zooms across the table and slams into his hand.

“For the love of—” he starts, shaking out his hand, and Rey tucks her face into her knees.

“Sorry.” Her voice is muffled.

“No, it’s—Thanks.”

Finn picks up the jug, wary. “That’s amazing,” he says to her, hoping she’ll smile. He can only see her eyes peeking out, but they look happy.

Jess grabs the jug while Poe is in the middle of a pour, sloshing water everywhere.

“Hey, watch it!”

“You’re ignoring me. You taking me home or what?”

“Do you need help?” Finn asks, wondering if she was hurt on her last mission.

“No, not from you right now. Dameron?”

Poe takes a long drink of water and wipes his mouth. “Not tonight, Testor.”

“What? Why?”

“I have a— midlife crisis I should be having.”

Jess cuts her eyes over to Rey and back to him, raising an eyebrow. He frowns at her. She looks over at Finn and back and raises both eyebrows.

“Shut up.”

She laughs at him. “No, really. Come on. I’m in the mood for that thing.”

She does something complicated and somehow obscene with her hands. Poe smacks them away.

“Can you not do that right—”

“Poe, come _on_.”

“Can’t put off a crisis, Jess. Sorry. Another time.”

She makes a face at him and then gets up and stomps over to another circle of pilots. She steps up onto the bench and shouts, “All right, who’s taking Testor home?”

Five hands shoot up, and she points at the green-gilled woman.

“You first. Make your case. I think I know what it’s gonna be, but I want to hear it.”

Poe groans and turns back to the others, hands over his ears.

“What’s a midlife crisis?” Rey asks him, sitting up straight.

“It happens to old people,” Poe says. 

“Are you old, Poe?” she asks. Finn’s not sure if she’s teasing, but it doesn’t seem like it.

Poe shrugs. “Feels like it sometimes.”

“What was Jess talking about?”

“Which part?”

“That—” she tries to copy Jess’ hand motions. “What she wanted.”

“Oh. I, uh. It’s a thing. A sex thing.”

Rey nods thoughtfully. “Can you show me?”

Poe chokes on his water. “Sorry?”

“Can you show me the thing?

“What, like on a diagram?”

Rey laughs brightly. “No, like on me. We have the same parts. Me and Jess, I mean.” She looks over at Jess thoughtfully. “I think we do, anyway.”

Poe stares at her, then over at Finn. Finn says nothing. _He_ certainly can’t show her. He wonders if the thought should bother him. The two of them and whatever the thing is. But he’s drunk and the mental image is very fuzzy and confused and that hand gesture looked extremely complicated.

“Finn can help, maybe,” Rey suggests, “If it’s hard, I mean.”

Poe drops his glass onto the table.

“I, uh. I. Um. I have to— Do this thing. I have to have a crisis. Right now. I’m gonna go do that. Now. Good night." He stumbles as he gets up from the bench and runs his hands through his hair. After two steps, he turns back to them. “You’re okay? You have water? Both of you?”

Finn nods and smiles up at him. Rey gives him a thumbs up. Poe smiles back and then his face gets tight and . . . complicated.

“Finn,” he says, nodding. “Rey.”

“Hey!” Finn says before he takes a full step away. “Um. You sing really— Your music is really— I like it. The way you, you know. Do your music.”

Poe smiles at him for real this time, finally, warm and sleepy and familiar. “Thanks, Buddy. I like your music, too.”

Finn has no idea what that means, but he feels it settle, warm and filling like good hot food, into the pit in his belly. Rey reaches out and holds his hands and they watch Poe weave his way around the tables to the door, and Finn feels suddenly, wonderfully full.

**Author's Note:**

> For people who read this before, I took the song down for real life reasons. If it turns out I'm just paranoid, I'll throw it back up there. But it's not really *necessary*, so I hope you still like the story anyway.


End file.
